Blackwell�Tapia Prize to William Massey
June 12, 2006
William A. Massey, the Edwin S. Wiley Professor of Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton University, has been named the 2006 recipient of the Blackwell�Tapia Prize. The prize will be awarded at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications at the University of Minnesota, during the Fourth Blackwell�Tapia Conference, November 3 and 4. Like David Blackwell and Richard Tapia, the two mathematicians for whom the prize is named, Massey's outstanding contributions have come both in his mathematical research and in his work with people from groups under-represented in the mathematical sciences.
Massey's widely ranging research interests include dynamical queueing systems; performance, pricing, priority, and provisioning models for communication systems and services; asymptotic analysis of stochastic networks; and stochastic orders on posets.
In announcing the award, the National Blackwell�Tapia Committee cited Massey's continuing work as primary national organizer for the annual Conference for African American Researchers in the Mathematical Sciences. That is the case for the 2006 CAARMS, which will be held at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, June 20�23. But Massey's efforts, the committee wrote, "extend well beyond that venue to chairing and contributing to many other national committees and conferences that address this problem, in addition to his personal mentoring of many successful minority mathematical scientists."
SIAM is among the groups to have benefited from Massey's dedication to under-represented minorities: He has served as an organizer of Diversity Day, a regular feature at SIAM annual meetings, including the event held in Philadelphia during SIAM's 50th-anniversary meeting, and he has been a regular presence at the day since its inception in 1995.
Information about the Fourth Blackwell�Tapia Conference can be found at http://www.ima.umn.edu/2006-2007/SW11.3-4.06/.
